Portland Public Schools phone policy under Oregon law, serving ~44,000 students in Portland. Oregon's executive order requires every district to adopt a policy banning personal devices during regular instructional hours. Enforcement models, costs, and compliance for administrators.
Portland Public Schools, the largest school district in Oregon, is a public school district headquartered in Portland, Oregon (Multnomah County), serving approximately 44,000 students across the Portland area. Like every district in Oregon, its cell phone rules are shaped by state law — and by how well the policy is actually enforced on each campus.
Does PPS ban cell phones?
Yes — by gubernatorial directive. Executive Order 25-09 (2025) directs every Oregon district to adopt a phone-free policy.
For the full statute, scope, effective date, and primary sources, see our guide to Oregon's phone-free school executive order, part of our phone-free school laws by state directory.
Enforcing a phone-free day across Portland
An executive order binds administratively but is not a statute, so the district should put working enforcement in place that survives a change in framework. At 44,000 students, PPS's scale is exactly where the enforcement method matters most: a policy that works in one classroom has to work across dozens of campuses at once.
Three enforcement models districts choose from
- • Physical pouches (e.g., Yondr): a per-student cost that recurs as pouches are lost or damaged, plus daily distribution and unlocking logistics multiplied by every campus — and little compliance data.
- • District storage (lockers, caddies, classroom bins): low hardware cost, but it relies on staff to police compliance period after period.
- • Device-level software (LockedIn): OS-level locking, campus geofencing, and automated reporting — deployed identically to every school in the district with no daily logistics.
LockedIn is a software-based phone-free campus solution built for districts like PPS. It locks student phones at the operating-system level on the devices students already carry, ties enforcement to school hours and campus geofences, and gives administrators a live dashboard plus automated compliance reports — exactly what a Oregon district needs to show enforcement is real. There's no hardware to ship, lose, or replace across Portland. Compare the options in our phone-free campus solution comparison or the LockedIn vs. Yondr breakdown, and model the math with our pouch-vs-software cost calculator.
What PPS schools can do next
Any Portland-area school can go phone-free in under a day with LockedIn. Draft a compliant policy with our free phone-free school policy generator, then contact our team for a district quote. Title I schools in Oregon may also qualify for subsidized access.
Explore other Oregon school districts or browse phone-free school coverage by district.